KILLJOYS – Season 1 Episode 4 – SPOILERS

JENNY: “My family gets paid three times for my honour what I would make as an engineer.”
JOHN: “Maybe you’re underestimating how good an engineer you could have been.”
JENNY: “I’ve thought about it. Look, these girls are my real family now. I’d do anything for them. Please don’t tell them that I sometimes have doubts.”
JOHN: “Not even if they bribe me with bacon.”

The women of Qresh find childbirth gauche, so they contract it out. Qreshi embryos are implanted in surrogates (vessels) who are, for the most part, the female offspring of Leithian farmers. The surrogates are kept in convents, and shielded from any environmental pollutants that might compromise their health or the health of their babies. They are organically raised virgins. One of them, Constance (Chloe Rose) is carrying the only remaining heir to one of the nine families that control The Company.

Constance believes in what she is doing, and her goal is to help raise a Qreshi ruler who understands the problems of Leithians. The episode’s best scene has to be when Mother Sal (Laara Sadiq) is revealed as something of an non-believer as she decides to turn Constance over to the attackers. It is Constance, not Dutch, who stops this by stabbing Mother Sal in the neck, and, as the head nun bleeds out, explains to Dutch her commitment to what she does. “Being a vessel is my calling and it matters to me,” she says. “Mother Sal doesn’t get a say in that and neither do you. I want to finish this, for the baby and for me.”

The Killjoys find five surrogates at the nuns’ hideout: Jenny, Clara, Gwen, and Constance (and the fifth vessel whose name is never mentioned). Gwen gets shot as they are fighting their way out of the compound. Jenny disguises herself as the pregnant Constance, walks over to their attackers and calmly blows herself up with a plasma grenade. There is a parallel between Jenny’s martyrdom and what happened to that Enzo fellow at the begining of the episode. He got himself blown up by security wire because he couldn’t face another jail term. Jenny, one suspects, may have had similar thoughts about facing a (figuratively) barefoot and (literally) pregnant existence in the service of the nine families of Qresh.

OBSERVATION: In that opening scene, shooting Enzo in the leg to prevent him from running would seem to have been a reasonable option. Either that or they could have physically restrained the fellow rather than hold him at gunpoint.

Dutch and D’Avin seem to naturally confide in one another. Dutch tells D’Avin that she grew up in something akin to a royal harem. Earlier, Delle observed that the musical instrument hanging on Lucy’s wall is of a type usually reserved for Royals in other parts of ‘The J’. There is a strong implication that Dutch is or was closely associated with a royal family in some nearby star system.

They have holograms in The Quad, but apparently don’t use them much. When the nuns hid Constance in The Badlands of Westerley, they concealed their location with holographic landscaping. This is the only hologram we have yet seen and that may indicate that only fixed, inanimate objects can be projected. Dutch takes no precautions at all before poking her hand into the fake embankment, and then Johnny walks right through and sticks his head back out from the other side. Admittedly, no animals were in evidence in that part of the Badlands, and no one would have reason to guard what they believed to be a securely hidden entrance, but still, there could have been something nasty on the other side.

Liethian Nationalists were mentioned in passing, but no further details were offered about them. We now know John is a foodie, because he likes bacon and has elaborate philosophical reasons for disliking pie. We also learned that Badlands are what is left after The Company gets done stripping resources from a region. The Company, it seems, is not at all concerned with the condition of Westerley’s ecosystems, and one might speculate that when Westerley becomes sufficiently uninhabitable, they might just terraform the place. (It is probable that terraforming was necessary to make the moon habitable to begin with.)

Dutch has many skills. She has (as yet untapped) musical talents if the multi-coloured lyre-like instrument on her wall is any indication. Dutch surprises Delle Seyah Kendry (Mayko Nguyen) by quoting an author with whom Delle is apparently familiar: “When your enemy has two faces, strike a deal with both.” Add that to her implied royal connections, and Dutch may be developing into a sort of warrior princess. Mayko Nguyen‘s character will appear in at least two more episodes of the first season of KILLJOYS.

This is the first episode of KILLJOYS written by Emily Andras.

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NOTES

Allie MacDonald (Clara) was Hannah the squonk in the LOST GIRL episode Fae-ge Against the Machine, which was directed by Andy Mikita, who also directed this episode of KILLJOYS. (A squonk is a fae whose tears have the ability to make other people happy.) MacDonald is Belinda McKay in the CITY-TV series YOUNG DRUNK PUNK, about growing up punk in Calgary in the 1980’s. Season 2 of that series will begin airing in January.

Alisha Phillips made her TV debut in this episode as the unnamed fifth surrogate. She is also a singer, and below (right) is one of her songs.

Dayle McLeod (Jenny) will be Hannah in season 2 of THAT’S MY DJ. Hannah is described as the most buzzed about DJ in the city, in a long-term committed relationship with her boyfriend until she meets Meagan (Emily Piggford) who makes her question her sexuality. There’s still a bit of time left to support the series on indegogo.